THE VOICES OF ANIMALS. 399 



always showed bis joy whenever the emperor mounted him. He would 

 permit but one groom in whose care he was placed to get on his back, 

 but, when this groom was the rider, the whole bearing and movements 

 of the horse were different from what they were when the emperor 

 rode him. In the former case the horse seemed to be fully conscious 

 that his rider was but a subordinate. "When the emperor had lost his 

 way while out riding or hunting, he simply placed the reins on the 

 neck of this horse, and he had always speedily and surely found the 

 right way. Whenever the emperor approached, the horse gave expres- 

 sion to his joy by a special sort of neighing, and often it had seemed 

 to Napoleon as if the animal were trying to tell him something. Nico- 

 lardot, basing his assertion on experience, maintains that each animal 

 has a language of its own, and that it is simply due to the imperfec- 

 tion of our organs that we do not understand this language. In this 

 connection we would mention that Kasper Hauser, the w r ell-known 

 foundling, who had eaten no meat up to his twenty-first year, insisted 

 at the time, shortly after he was found, and before he had grown ac- 

 customed to animal food, that he understood the language of all ani- 

 mals, and that very often, when a dog barked or a bird chirped, he 

 knew exactly what was meant. The animals approached him with- 

 out fear, and seemed to be conscious that he could understand them, 

 but this all came to an end when he began to take animal food. Hence, 

 it might be inferred that the eating of meat tends to remove us from 

 the animal world and to weaken our understanding of its ways. But, 

 if we turn our whole attention to animals, our superior intellect will 

 soon place us in the way of understanding their language. 



About 1770 Galliani had two cats which he always kept about him, 

 and away from all other animals. He states that he understood them 

 perfectly, and that they had a complete language of their own in 

 which they always expressed the same wish and the same feeling by 

 exactly the same sound. Lucian observed the common house-fly, and 

 also maintains that this insect, so greatly despised and persecuted, 

 possesses a complete language — that is to say, uses certain sounds in 

 its buzzing to denote certain things, and in this way makes itself un- 

 derstood among kind. Lamartine, in his descriptions of travels in the 

 East, tells of Arabian horses that used certain definite sounds to ex- 

 press certain things, just as Napoleon relates of his steed. 



Birds, in addition to the sounds peculiar to them, are gifted with 

 a great talent for imitation. There is hardly a bird, provided it has 

 any voice at all, that can not imitate, at least to a certain extent, the 

 sounds of Nature. Birds attempt to imitate each other, the voices of 

 other animals, and in fact all possible sounds. Parrots are able to 

 make a noise like that produced by a saw, the sound of a cork drawn 

 from a bottle, and other noises still more peculiar. The mocking-bird 

 is a perfect plagiarist in the feathered world ; he imitates almost all 

 songsters, even the nightingale. The kingfisher can reproduce most 



